I’m glad he’s kissing me to drown out the high-pitched whine of need escaping the back of my throat. The wild pleasure, the joy, and the tease of the next release—I forgot sex could feel this amazing.
I watch his face—transformed from the usual careful mask he wears, distorted with raw, devastated need.
His jaw clenches, veins popping with effort, eyes watering as our gazes lock again.
“Tell me you love me,” he demands, pinning me against the side of the spa and shaking with the restraint of keeping his climax at bay.
I squirm on his shaft, tears running down my face. “I love you, Caleb.”
I know I admitted it once, back in Dallas, but I haven’t repeated it since.
His face contorts even more as he leans down, presses his forehead to mine, and starts fucking me slow. Deep. Mesmerizing me.
“Fucking right, you love me,” he growls.
“Fucking right,” I gasp, more tears springing to my eyes.
He tugs me close in every way—with his arm around my waist, by the fingers still up my clenching ass, and with his shaft plunged so deep and throbbing inside me?—
I can’t look away from the absolute pained bliss that takes over his features as he thrusts deep one more time and his hips jerk with release.
The next second he releases the pinching grip on my nipple and the tidal wave of pleasure that had beenjustout of reach moments before suddenly floods me.
Light flashes outward from my belly to the tips of my fingers and toes and scalp, and then every part of me is shaking with release as we climax together.
We sink back down into the hot, bubbling water, both spent, muscles still quaking.
“Feel free to get angry at me any time,” he gasps.
My giggle is drowned out by the water as I dip my head underneath the surface, feeling as effervescent as the bubbles.
TWENTY-SEVEN
CALEB
Eight hours.
I’ve been counting them, which means my brain is already betraying me, but in the best possible way—because it’s been eight hours with Harper trulybackin my arms, all her walls crumbled to rubble.
Her hunger for me is as unmistakable as mine always was for her, and eight uninterrupted hours with her is the best thing that has ever happened to me. And at the same time, still nowhere near enough.
I’ve lost count of how many times we made love last night. That detail I actually let go of, somewhere around round three, when my brain finally shut the hell up for the first time in approximately a decade.
First in the hot tub. Then in the shower after we stumbled back to her room, laughing and dripping all over each other. Then again, in bed, after I made the creative executive decision that towel-drying her was going to take considerably longer than it might usually, since I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
We slept—really slept, the deep, dreamless kind I haven’t been able to access in years without the help of melatonin—and then her weight was on top of me at dawn, her hair spilling everywhere, her hips finding mine like she had no intention of letting us make it to sunrise without me inside her one more time.
She said the words I’d waited ten years to hear, over and over.
I love you, Caleb.
I’ve been replaying them on a loop.
And okay, that’s the OCD brain doing what it does, turning something beautiful into a groove. For once, I’m just letting it.
Some grooves deserve to godeep.
I’m not counting breaths or calculating primes or cataloging the angle of the sunlight through the curtains.